How to Ace Your SAT

Since you were a child, your parents, teachers and siblings have been telling you to do your homework and get good grades, or you'll never get into a decent college. Well we have the perfect retort for you: "It doesn't matter how I do in school; all I need to do is ace the SAT. So pass over the remote and the Cheetos!"

It's not quite that simple, but the Scholastic Aptitude Test does hold tremendous power in determining where you'll go to college. To go most colleges or universities in the United States, you have to have taken the SAT, a standardized exam that assigns you a score that ranks your reading, writing and math proficiency.

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Instructions

Know Why You Need to Take It

1. Look at a sample SAT. You can get a free copy of a practice test from your high school counselor, or you can go to the SAT website and go through some practice questions there. The SAT is not an intelligence test. Rather, it's considered to be a predictor of college success. The test has its pitfalls, and critics say people who are bad test-takers or who are intelligent in ways not measured by the test will score poorly.
   
   College admissions committees use the SAT to get a general idea of your scholastic aptitude, streamlining the process for the committee. It's much easier and much less costly for the committee to look at a score than to analyze all of your recommendations and interview you. Since committees place such importance on the test, you should also.
   
   Here are some important facts about the SAT:
   
   * The SAT is written by the Educational Testing Service. They are also responsible for writing the GRE, GMAT, and AP Tests. There are also SATs about specific subjects called SAT II tests.
   
   * The test is about 3 1/2 hours long, and it consists of two major sections: math skills and verbal skills (reading and writing).
   
   * Schools that receive a large number of applications will place more importance upon your SAT scores because they have many more applications to weed through.
   
   * The SAT is given seven times a year.
   
   * If you already have a school or two that you're interested in, find out what the average SAT scores of their students are. That can give you a goal to work toward.
   
   * Each section of the SAT is graded on a scale of 200-800. You will receive one score for the math section and one for the English section. A score of 500 on each means that you scored about average for each test. These scores change by units of 10, meaning that you can get a 590, 600, or 610 on a section, but you can't get a 596 or 605.

Next: Learn General Strategies

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Resources

• College Board's 10 Real SATs
• Princeton Review Test Prep
• Calculator Guidelines for SAT Test Takers

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[harvardbanana]

on 7/21/2009 Here's a fantastic article on CRITICAL READING:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5193165_attack-critical-reading-section-effectively.html